Having just deleted quite some number of posts on GameFAQs, this idea as suggested needs some serious work.
- Taking karma or anything other sort of negative action cannot be up to the normal users. That sort of action needs to be reviewed by an (ideally) disinterested third party to remove the personal attack aspects.
- Waiting for an offending user to run out of karma is a bad idea, nor could karma be freely given as it is now. It *could* be used as a factor in deciding the course of action for any given violation.
- Ideally, there would also be repercussions for someone continually marking posts that are not violations, to the point of losing their marking ability.
- This sort of system should only apply to specific forums; the game forums, the technical forums, etc. Including the entirety of Joe User in the system would require a mod staff much larger than anyone really wants. I'm speaking from experience there, remember I do this on a *much* larger forum with ~90 volunteer moderators handling 15-20k moderations (not posts, moderations) per week. Limiting the system to the narrow interest boards would keep the time investment for moderators to a minimum.
Speaking from that perspective, I don't think Stardock really needs this big a hammer to deal with the occasional malcontents here (or at least the ones I see. I avoid JU like the plague). As the company owning a private web site, they can pretty much set any rules they want, and enforce them pretty much however they feel like. In a lot of ways, GameFAQs is one of the most restrictive sites I've ever seen (there's a list of words banned from the site, and most methods of bypassing that are also moddable). On the other end of that is the infamous 4chan, where anything that isn't a federal crime is allowed, even encouraged. Picking a middle road, defining where the "too far" line is, and what to do about people who cross it pretty much on an individual basis seems to be working the way they are doing it.
I find censorship objectionable, proponents of it would receive negative karma from me. I suspect I could get 9 other people on this forum to go along with that idea.
Censorship in this case simply isn't a factor. I see people bitching about moderations all the time trying to claim first amendment violations and I mock them for it. Publicly whenever possible. As I am constantly pointing out to users over there, there are ways of making your point without trolling, flaming swearing, etc. If you can't think of those ways of expressing your ideas, that's no one's fault but your own.
If I were in your house, telling racist jokes and explicit stories to your children, you have every right to tell me to stop or leave. The same applies here - this is Stardock's playground. They make the rules and you have the options of following them or leaving. If they choose to listen to your input as to what the rules should be, fine, but they are under no obligation to do so
